Nevada fight over leaky irrigation canal and groundwater more complicated than appears on surface

RENO, Nev. (AP) — Water conflicts are nothing new to the arid West, where myriad users long have vied for their share of the precious resource from California’s Central Valley to the Colorado and Missouri rivers.

But few have waded into the legal question playing out in rural Nevada: To what extent can local residents, farmers and ranchers claim the water that is soaking into the ground through the dirt floor of an antiquated, unlined irrigation canal?

A federal appeals court recently...